


(reverse) Kidnapping

by AngeNoir



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kidnapped Tony Stark, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Road Trips, Slow Build, Stockholm Syndrome, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 01:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20858009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: Tony Stark is wallowing. He has a right to - he's just finished the funeral preparations for his parents in New York. He didn't expect them to live forever, but still...And then he falls asleep from his bender.And wakes up in a nightmare.(Is it a nightmare?)





	(reverse) Kidnapping

**Author's Note:**

> My amazing art was done by emotionalsupportcorpse !

Tony Stark was drunk. Again.

On the one hand, he didn’t really care about it—why would he? Who would bother him about it? Who was around to care?—but on the other hand, he actually was supposed to be figuring out his shit, figuring out what he would keep, what would be donated, and what would be thrown out. Of his parents’ shit.

It wasn’t exactly something he was looking forward too.

Hence, the drunkenness.

His apartment was a mess. He hadn’t let the cleaning crew come through, and had steadily trashed the place as he sunk deeper and deeper into his spiraling thoughts. He hadn’t even changed out of his black slacks and suit jacket from the reading of the will—he’d just thrown off his tie, found as many bottles as he could find, and did his level best to give himself alcohol poisoning.

He’d have to take on the company now. He thought he’d have more time. He’d thought… a lot of things.

He didn’t want any of this. He didn’t want to pack up his stuff and head to the family mansion in New York City, he didn’t want to have to deal with his father’s personal effects.

With his _mother’s_ personal effects.

He took another big swig from the bottle in his hand and leaned back against the couch. There were weird shadows and creaks, and the lights of the city reflected strangely.

He closed his eyes and suddenly lost consciousness.

* * *

He became aware, first, of a desperate need to piss. His bladder was screaming at him, and his head boiled and roiled. The urge to vomit pounded at his throat and gut, and he blinked open woozy eyes.

He was sat in a chair, hands… tied? Tied behind him.

Did he have company last night? No, he had been drinking alone. Funeral, and then the reading of the will, and the fact that he’d have to go and take care of his parents’ effects and step into the company all in the same week.

God, he could feel his anxiety ratchet up again—but no. No, the dim environment, the fact that he was tied, that he was in a chair in more or less the center of the room—definitely not against the wall—it all meant he’d been kidnapped again.

“Hello?” he croaked, looking around. “Anyone around?”

There was no response.

Tony jerked a little on the chair, and realized he hadn’t even been tied down to the chair.

Well. Not the first time he’d been underestimated by people who thought he’d be an easy target.

(It didn’t help that he was hungover as fuck.)

He stood up and staggered, nearly falling to the floor, and he heaved.

“Sit down.”

The words were muffled, but ominous. Tony jerked and nearly complied just out of surprise, as a tall, broad-shouldered man stalked out of the shadows of the room.

Tony wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind, but there was something very strange about this man. First was the _fucking metal arm_, second was the _mask_ that covered the man’s face from nose to chin, ear to ear. Then there was the greasy, lank hair that fell into those chilling, bright blue eyes. Muscles were corded through thick, tree-trunk arms and massive thighs.

“What do you expect to happen?” Tony asked, voice still a bit slurred and swallowed up as he fought not to throw up. “You think my company will pay for me to come back? No one _knows_ where I am.”

The man did nothing at all, just stared at him from behind that impressive mask.

After a few moments, Tony sat down. Might as well, after all. There wasn’t anything else to do, not with his kidnapper standing in front of him. The man didn’t seem inclined to talk, either, just stared at him.

It wasn’t like Tony was focused enough to notice much more, but the room seemed very empty. Looked like a lot of things had recently been moved, or removed. Echoes, and distant sounds of a street.

Kidnappings normally had a bunch of people, didn’t they?

Then Tony’s body violently let him know he would not keep his stomach’s contents to himself one second longer. He doubled over, falling off the chair, as his digestive system decisively expelled everything it could through his mouth.

The man came over, frowning, and lifted Tony up as Tony continued to heave. After a few minutes, the man carried Tony over to a bathroom and shoved him inside.

Well, it wasn’t intentional, but Tony would take it.

He dropped to his knees by the toilet, continuing to dry heave, even as he wiggled his hands down, under his knees and then feet, bringing his arms in front. In between his heaves—now, almost done, though he was continuing to fake it so he had time in the bathroom—he attacked the rope with his mouth.

He had no idea where he was, but he could hear traffic, which meant civilization. And, like most bathrooms, there was a small window. Tiny, but Tony was still tiny (unfortunately, or fortunately at the moment, but unfortunately most of the time) and could probably drag himself out and over the window.

He turned on the tap to full, and rusty water poured out before eventually coming out clean—though smelling strongly of metal.

Tony immediately ignored the water and went to the window, shoving at it. He could crack it, but he couldn’t risk it being louder than the water. It would be better if it would slide to the side and let him push through.

After a long few moments, a banging came on the door—and Tony pushed open the window. It was a bit high off the ground, but he could—

The door slammed open.

Tony shoved himself through the window and out, crashing down badly on his wrist. He could _feel_ something go wrong with it, and cried out, but he was still moving, still scrambling to get to his feet.

The man’s metal arm _punched through the fucking wall_. It was—it was so far out of what Tony expected, could have predicted, that he literally paused to stare at the man as he _tore his way through the wall_.

“What the _fuck_,” Tony whispered—and took off running.

Of course he didn’t get far. Made sense. Something hard and unforgiving grabbed fiercely at his elbow, yanked him backwards, and Tony’s vertigo, hangover, and general fuzziness meant he stumbled and tripped, going down hard. The last thing he saw were those piercing, bright eyes burning into his.

* * *

Tony sat on the floor of some motel room, legs crossed, back against the bed, as the strange man paced the room, glancing through the back window and then out the peephole. His left wrist was currently handcuffed to the bedframe, and normally Tony would be cracking jokes, but this was a weird enough situation that he really didn’t have the energy to do so.

Running hadn’t worked—all it had gotten Tony was a broken wrist, bruises, and being knocked out. Now he was here, in an unfamiliar motel room that he could not identify and could not place, no pad of paper or helpful signage anywhere to even tell him what fucking chain he was at, and Tony didn’t have any clue where he was at all. For all he knew, he wasn’t even in New York anymore. Maybe New Jersey, maybe Pennsylvania—hell, maybe even Virginia. Who the hell knew.

He didn’t get why this person wanted to—okay, that was a partial lie. He knew why _people_ wanted to kidnap him. But he didn’t know why _this_ person wanted to kidnap him. Money? Revenge? Money was the driving motivator of most of Tony’s kidnappings, but this person hadn’t called the company to ask for ransom. It could be revenge, but that normally involved a lot of talking.

And this guy was _silent_.

Like, to the point that Tony wanted to talk, that was how bad it was. Normally, Tony adopted a _laissez-faire_ attitude towards his many kidnappers. It meant less bruises and bumps, made them underestimate him, and gave him time to think through a way to escape if he could. He’d learned as a little kid that talking was a sure-fire way to upset someone and earn more bumps and bruises, so by the time he was in the double-digits he would fold his arms, lean back in whatever chair he was in, and wait for his moment.

But it had never been so _silent_ before.

Clearly this guy had expected that first place to be occupied with someone. Maybe the police had already nabbed the rest of this man’s gang, and the guy didn’t want to let Tony go since Tony had seen him.

Still, there were a lot of incongruities that Tony wasn’t sure how to make sense of. Like that metal arm, or the way that mask covered the bottom half of his face, or how he’d gotten into Tony’s apartment in the first place.

“I gotta piss,” Tony finally said.

The man turned around to look at him, ice-blue eyes empty and emotionless.

“I could piss right here, but a, I don’t like the idea of sitting in a puddle, b, I don’t _want_ to sit here in a puddle, and c, I don’t know how long we’re going to be in this room or on the run, but if my clothes smell like piss I’m sure someone would notice,” Tony said matter-of-factly. “So let me go to the bathroom.”

For a long moment, the man did nothing, and Tony fought not to do anything at all, to keep his own face as blank as the kidnapper’s.

Finally, the man nodded, and stalked over to Tony’s side. Without saying a word, he gripped Tony’s elbow firmly and _yanked_ him to his feet.

“Ow, what the hell, use your goddamn words, jesus,” Tony hissed, tucking his right hand against his chest to steady the throbbing wrist that hadn’t appreciated the jerky motion.

The man shoved him into the bathroom and then stared.

“Oh, I’m supposed to piss in _front_ of you?”

The man did not move.

“What the fuck,” Tony whispered to himself, lifting the lid of the toilet and, awkwardly, one-handidly, undid his zip, making sure to put his back to the guy. As he took his time, his eyes darted around the bathroom, looking for anything useful at all. The hairdryer had potential, but he needed time to disassemble it, and it wasn’t like the guy was moving an inch. Grumbling under his breath, he managed to get his dick out and aim.

When he was done, he shook once and then let out a shriek as the man was suddenly _there_, grasping his elbow.

“What the _hell_, man, piss off! Let me get myself back together and wash my goddamn hands, you lunatic!” Tony snarled, more terrified than angry.

One heartbeat pounded into two, than three, and then finally the man dropped Tony’s elbow with something akin to a hiss.

Tony scrambled to tuck himself back in and make his way to the tiny sink. All that was there were tiny soaps and lotions—but better to have some options than none. It wasn’t hard to palm the bar of soap as he rinsed his hands; the man wasn’t even really watching, fiddling as he was with his earpiece.

Great. What was he going to do with a bar of soap and a bottle of lotion? Not much. Still, having something in his pockets was better than having nothing—the man must have emptied Tony’s pockets entirely when he first nabbed him.

The man looked up, eyes piercing, and he looked at Tony’s wrist before jerking his head to the main room.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony mumbled, wishing he could have had some level of privacy in the bathroom, but maybe what he had would be enough. Or maybe the guy would be distracted again—Tony hadn’t really done well trying to escape last time, but the guy had to trip up at some point.

Right?

* * *

“Get up.”

Tony blinked at the muffled voice, trying to place why he’d hear some man’s voice in his apartment—

Wait.

No.

Something in Tony dropped when he realized he was still in that ratty motel room, that masked and cold-eyed man with a metal arm standing over him, voice implacable and unrelenting. “Did you even sleep,” Tony muttered, levering himself up from the ground—he’d fallen asleep there last night, squished between the bed and the night-table, not allowed to sleep on the bed and unwilling to simply stretch out on the floor like a dog, left wrist chained .

“This asset does not need to sleep,” the man rumbled. “We’re going.”

“_We’re going_,” Tony muttered in a high-pitched falsetto.

The man turned to give him a _look_, the mask making it _way_ creepier than it needed to be. Tony did his best not to react at all, not to give anyone that satisfaction—but it was hard, not to react at all. There was no give, no chance, with this man, and Tony didn’t know what he _wanted_.

He just had to bide his time. He just needed to wait until he could find an opening.

* * *

The kidnapper had managed to get some random car in the parking lot open, and so he was now fiddling with the wires, his handcuffs on Tony’s non-broken wrist hooked onto the door handle.

(The parking lot didn’t look familiar, no familiar color scheme on the building, no clear signs. Must be some rural piece of shit place, but it meant it would both be easier and harder to place. Tony just needed to find the damn sign _somewhere—_)

The man—Mask, Tony decided—Mask finished, and the car turned over. Tony eyed him as he moved to the back of the car, stowing something—Tony didn’t know what, but must be some kind of supplies the man must have had before—and Tony slipped the lotion out of his pocket and, quickly, smeared the goop around his wrist and then pulled, sharp and harsh, popping his thumb out of joint.

Then he took off into the woods.

He didn’t stop to look back, though he knew Mask was after him. He’d waste time looking back, and the tree line was just ahead. All he had to do was make it into the brush, and maybe he could get up a tree quick enough or find somewhere to hide.

He was _almost_ there—

Something—no, he knew exactly _who_, some_one_—barreled into him from behind, knocking him down, and then before he could really get his bearings, he was backhanded in the face.

He couldn’t help the yelp of pain as his head snapped to the side, the whole left side of his face throbbing with pain.

Then he was being bodily lifted up and dragged back to the car.

He could taste blood on the inside of his mouth, and suddenly it was all too much—burying his parents in the past month, getting ready to leave his home, his apartment, to step up into the company his father had left, Rhodey going into the Air Force fully and no longer nearby and ready to talk to Tony, Jarvis dead and gone, no one looking for him and no reason given for this treatment—that he couldn’t stop the tears and broken sobs that began to wrack his body.

The man shoved him into the backseat of the car, in the footwell, and then slammed the door on Tony’s head.

With a growling rumble, the car backed out, and then bumped down the road.

* * *

The thing about kidnappings, about being held for a long period of time, is that there’s so much _waiting_. Tony cried himself to sleep, huddled and clutching his bad wrist against his chest, trying not to put pressure on the left side of his face, crushed into the footwell. He might have been able to lever himself up, but not easily, and—he was ashamed to admit it—he was having a breakdown. He stayed where he’d been shoved, cradling his wrist, and had to hope he’d get a shot to try and get away yet another time.

(_It was extremely unlikely—kidnappers rarely made more than one or two mistakes—once he got away the once he had to stay away or else risk losing any chance in the future—he couldn’t count on a mistake like that again—they always paid more attention once the first attempt failed—_)

So he’d fallen asleep, and woken up to see the sun almost directly overhead. He didn’t know where Mask was taking him. Most likely to his team, wherever they were.

It was odd that Mask looked as out of his depth as Tony felt. That first place Tony had woke up in, that warehouse, Tony had thought that was where Mask had taken him to make sure no one had followed him or noticed Tony’s absence… but maybe Mask had been abandoned, too.

Now that he was lying there, feeling his face and wrist throb, he had time to really consider and think about the events that had led up to this.

He had been in his apartment. He’d been drunk as hell. The guy could have snuck in without Tony knowing easily, but in a general way, as in, Tony wouldn’t have noticed shit at the moment unless it came up and bit him on the ass. Yet he _shouldn’t_ have been able to get in. Tony lived in a fairly well-protected apartment, with a doorman and everything, and a kinda bodyguard/chauffer who lived down the hall from Tony’s apartment.

Tony vaguely hoped the guy was still alive. So far this guy hadn’t seemed to be violent, not really, but at the same time, who the hell knew? The guy had a fucking _metal arm_.

That was another thing—the arm. It was advanced as shit, and nothing Tony could recognize. There was certainly nothing near it on Tony’s desk, and the prosthetics Tony knew about and saw were nowhere near as advanced as that one was. The arm was a technological marvel.

Then there was the warehouse Tony had first woken up in. It had looked like a recently abandoned warehouse—and Mask had looked confused. Sure as hell discomfited. Didn’t seem like the kind of guy to operate on his own.

So. Some group had hired Mask or had Mask to get Tony, and then bailed. Might have bailed if cops found them, if something happened to scare them off, or if the plan changed.

Still, they should have had a way to contact and tell Mask. Mask looked a lot like he was trying to think of the fly—and that thinking on the fly wasn’t something he was used to doing.

Then, the motel. Mask had gone to regroup somewhere, somewhere familiar or close to somewhere familiar. So, a secondary location? Most likely.

Tony wasn’t sure if it would be a good thing or bad thing to get to said secondary location. On the one hand, Mask had weathered two escape attempts and so would be watching Tony carefully; new people wouldn’t watch him that carefully. On the other hand, Tony would finally figure out what the people wanted with him… and it was looking more and more like it wasn’t to keep him alive for very long.

He glanced around the footwell of the car. There wasn’t anything very useful there—a box of tissues, a roll of electrical tape. That was pretty much it. And a piece of gum.

The sight of it brought Tony’s attention to his body, very firmly. He had woken up hungover, thrown up, not rinsed out his mouth even, and then been knocked out and woke up _again_ in a strange place. He smelled, his mouth tasted like something had died and rotted in it, and his hair felt weirdly stiff and definitely matted.

Was this what he was reduced to? Eating a piece of gum off the floor?

Well, shit. It wasn’t like the guy was giving him food, now, was he? Tony didn’t know where the hell he was or how long he’d been with the guy, but Mask for sure had him for at least a day and it didn’t look like they were stopping for food any time soon—

The car began to slow.

Suddenly anxious and terrified, Tony hunched down, trying to look smaller and more pathetic. It hadn’t really worked yet, but maybe Mask would fall for that. Sometimes people looked at pathetic things and discounted them.

Sometimes it only made it more likely that they’d get hurt, but. Tony was always a gambler. He’d take this chance.

The car door opened, and closed. The trunk popped open, and Tony watched the trunk lift up and cover the rear window.

If he could manage to push himself up, make another run for it—

Using his elbows, he wiggled himself as best he could, trying to get his back up against the door, give himself some room to reach the door handle, only by then the door was opening and an overwhelmingly powerful hand had him gripped by the back of the collar and jerked him out of the car.

Tony stumbled and went down to his knees in the grass, tiny pieces of gravel crunching into his knees and making him wince.

Mask stood there, a long chain dangling from his hand. No—not a chain. A—

“No, no, no!” Tony said, trying to scramble away, but he was hampered by his bruises, his still-off depth perception, his aching wrist that couldn’t help him at all. Without any real difficulty, Mask yanked him out and clamped one end of the chain around his left wrist.

(At least it wasn’t his hurt wrist, but that wasn’t much of a help.)

The other end of that chain went on the man’s flesh arm.

Tony figured that he would have had some repercussions from his continuous escape attempts, but he hoped that would be more like… tying him up. Finding a spot to hunker down. Contacting the rest of the crew, whoever and wherever they were.

All of those were situations Tony had been in before—and escaped from. All of them were things Tony could plan for.

“You don’t want to do this, man, you don’t want to be tied to me like this—_no one_ wants to be tied to me like this, not even the people who birthed me, you don’t me hanging onto you day and night, and man, don’t _you_ ever need to piss? Don’t you ever need to like, shower? I’m gonna be fucking rank soon and you know it, and at the very least I should be able to shower—except I _can’t_, you fucking chained my jacket and shirt to my arm—”

It was sudden, the backhand that sent Tony into the car, and he slumped to the floor, dazed.

“Stop speaking.”

Tony couldn’t really speak, anyway. His head was ringing, he was lightheaded from not eating, dehydrated from his hangover, aching all over from his wounds and bruises, and he just…

Gave up.

* * *

Mask made Tony climb into the car, back into the space between the backseat and the front seat, and glared so virulently that Tony knew he was contemplating murder. Not that he needed to intimidate Tony anymore; Tony had nothing left to give. He was tired, he was hungry, and he was tired of hurting.

With some fancy finagling, the man climbed in after Tony, pulled the door shut, and then clambered into the front seat so that the chain didn’t tangle up or restrict his movements. Tony had a briefly petty thought—to pull the chain, jerk the car one way or another, make the man more irritated—but he didn’t have the slightest drive to do so anymore. Instead, he awkwardly leaned his head on the bump of the doorframe and tried not to imagine a gruesome and deadly end for himself.

The motion of the car, and the sheer apathy, had him drifting off into a doze.

* * *

Tony jerked awake when something hit him—gently, but all parts of him ached, so he didn’t know whether it could really be called ‘gently’ or not—in his chest and stomach. A bottle of water and a bag of jerky.

He twined his head up from his position—still stuffed in the footwell behind the front seat—to see that the man had unhooked one corner of his mask, though the side furtherst from Tony, so he still couldn’t make out any facial features. Clearly, the man was chewing.

Maybe they had stopped for gas at some point, and the man had transferred the cuff to the steering wheel, or something. Maybe the man just had a stash of bottled water and dried meat.

Tony didn’t know, and at this point, Tony didn’t care.

What was the point of caring? It had been at least two days, maybe three. Any much longer and Tony would officially be held captive for a longer period of time than he ever had since he had hit double-digits.

No one was looking for him. His parents were dead, Rhodey was on his army base, training, and Obadiah had told Tony to lie low since his parents had died.

No one cared where Tony was.

* * *

“Up.”

Tony blinked blearily, and realized the man had somehow gotten out of the car, though the chain still looked intact. How the man kept disappearing and reappearing…

“Up.”

Tony tried to pull himself up with his good arm, chain clinking against itself as he grasped weakly at the back of the chair. Clearly, he was not fast enough for Mask; the man yanked him hard, spilling him out of the car and onto the ground.

There was an appropriately forbidding warehouse before them. There were not many signs of inhabitation, a few boxes stamped with varying cities from around America. A manufacturing plant of some kind, though not recently used. Metal was rusted, corrugated, worn through to holes in some places.

Like every cliché hideout come to life.

Mask jerked Tony to his feet and Tony stumbled, black dots eating away at his vision as he fought to stay upright. Not that Mask seemed very sympathetic to that; he began striding forward, long and lank hair fluttering a little in the mild wind.

Well, that at least told him he wasn’t in New York anymore. Though New York had been going through a bit of a warm snap—snow wasn’t clumped up like mountains on the bushes, but rather melting away into mud-colored slush on the ground—the wind was still much colder than Tony was used to in California. This man had driven him more south, and while Tony had been planning to make his escape from New York as soon as possible, after dealing with the funeral details for his parents, this was _not_ the way he had intended.

The man lifted his hand, tugging lightly on Tony’s arm, to press his fingertip against a particularly rusty nail jutting out of the doorframe. Squinting and grimacing in sympathetic pain, Tony almost missed the nearly-silent invisible hum of machinery activating.

DNA lock. How? Again, the technology was possible, just nowhere on the market currently. Sure, Howard had kicked around the idea, but ultimately deemed it too complicated and unnecessary for most companies due to the amount of effort and expenditure needed to—

Mask pulled forward again, making Tony stagger a few steps forward, and they walked into the building.

The _uninhabited_ building.

* * *

It would have been almost comical, if Tony’s life wasn’t in the hands of a madman who looked to be becoming more and more unhinged. Clearly this was supposed to be a secondary rendezvous point, and something had fallen through. It meant this person didn’t know what to do with Tony, or himself, and it was all Tony could do to keep his mouth shut and not start hysterically laughing—because it was genuinely funny, or because that was the only expression he had left to face the terror of his potential death, he didn’t know.

There were clear signs that _someone_ had been here recently, at least. Something big and heavy had been sitting in that corner there—the legs of it had left sunken holes in the old floor—and over _there_ had been a bank of computers, what with the desk space cleared off in specific patterns and the few chairs sitting around those tables. Paper had clearly been burned recently, and Tony absently wondered if he could pick out scraps and clues from them—if only he wasn’t physically chained to Mask.

With a frustrated growl, Mask kicked the nearest chair and turned to Tony—who had ducked and cowered the minute Mask had lashed out at the piece of furniture.

It was embarrassing, but Tony wasn’t going to antagonize his captor any more than he already had. He kept his mouth shut and dropped his head low, shoulders hunched and cringing away.

The other man stopped, and stared at him, those disturbingly blank eyes suddenly much more intense, much sharper, much more focused. After a long few minutes, the man grunted and made his way back to the car, Tony in tow.

Man, Tony sure hoped Mask wasn’t about to just kill him and be done with it. Hopefully the man was waiting for some level of payoff; all Tony’s worth was in what he could pay. If this man thought there was no more reason to keep him around—

The man pulled Tony closer to the trunk of the beat-up car, and Tony sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to be locked into it, though he couldn’t spare much energy to care one way or another. He just wanted—

Mask pulled out some weird white-looking plastic packets. For half a second, Tony thought it might be some form of plastic explosives, and wondered if the man was going to stuff Tony in the car and set it off.

Then the man held out one of the packets to Tony. “Nutrition,” he said from behind the mask.

For a very long moment, Tony just stared at the packet, and then slowly took it with his good hand. He so badly wanted to speak, but his face, his growling stomach, and the pain lighting up his body had taught him by now not to. After all, since he didn’t know what this person was after, he couldn’t correctly predict how far he could push him.

Mask peeled open the plastic to show a kind of funnel-like crease built into it. Then he reached up and unhooked his mask.

“Holy _shit_!”

Mask paused and looked at Tony like one might look at a particularly ugly specimen under a microscope.

Tony knew he shouldn’t be speaking—he had _just_ been thinking it, he was running on fumes, his vision was tunneling and weird and strange, but he could be forgiven for this, right? This was—this was so out of left field—it was like finding out your kidnapper was _Marilyn Manson_. “Holy _shit,_ you’re fucking _Bucky Barnes_!”

The man’s brow creased, mouth turning down into a frown. “Who the hell is Bucky Barnes?” he asked, voice suddenly much softer and calmer than it had been behind the mask.

“Who the—_you_. _You_ the hell is Bucky Barnes!” Tony blurted out, heart racing as fast as he could, until he realized what he’d just said and flushed bright red at the words that had come from his mouth.

The man frowned at him, staring intently for the span of a few heartbeats, before shrugging and bringing the plastic pouch up to his mouth to squeeze what looked like paste out of the packet and into his mouth. “Nutritional compounds contain required sustenance in quick and portable containers.”

“Okay, we cannot just gloss over the fact that you are motherfucking _Bucky Barnes_. That’s something fucking important!” Tony said wildly, waving his bad arm around like a windmill—though carefully, so not as uncontrolled as he wanted to be when he was practically vibrating through the chain. “You—where did you—how is this possible? Who _are_ you? What do you _want_ with me?”

Mask—_Bucky Barnes_—stared at Tony impassively. “Nutritional compounds need to be ingested regularly to maintain weight and strength. Your body is dehydrated and undernourished. Proper care must be taken to maintain optimal levels of survival. Eat.”

Tony’s newfound spirit and energy slowly drained away at the impassiveness before him. There was no reaction, nothing at all from Mask—from _Barnes_—except flat expectation. After a moment, he took the pack gingerly and stared down at it.

Those cold eyes watched him apathetically before the man turned back to his own paste-pouch.

“Where are you going to take me now, if your buddies aren’t here?”

There was no response, just the crunch of gravel beneath those combat boots and the weird crinkling noise of the packet.

“We’re clearly somewhere much warmer than New York. I can’t imagine you want to be stuck with me much longer,” he tried again, doing his best to keep his voice calm, trying to anticipate any angry movements.

But still, no response. Tony licked his lips nervously, thumbing at the edge of the plastic, before trying a different tack. “Is there any way we could maybe eat real food? Not… this?”

Mask—_Barnes_—suddenly stepped forward, and Tony dropped the packet, cringing away and trying very hard not to hyperventilate.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened, and when Tony chanced a look, Barnes’s face looked… almost regretful. Certainly not fully impassive.

Carefully, Barnes reached down and picked up the dropped packet, tearing it open and offering it to Tony. Quietly—and damn if his voice wasn’t so much softer and kinder without the mask—he said, “Nutrition has been provided. Intravenous nutrition cannot be provided for at this time. Food replacements are low priority and dangerous due to the high-profile nature of this mission.”

For a long few moments, Tony simply considered those words, and this new information that made _no_ fucking sense. What was this man, a Bucky clone? Perhaps. Maybe. Possibly. Why else would the man look identical to James Barnes, sniper of the Howling Commandos and Captain America’s right-hand man? Tony had had pictures of the original Howling Commandos hanging around the mansion since he was old enough to ask who the people in those pictures were, and he knew exactly what Bucky Barnes looked like.

So. Clone? Possibly. The wet sciences weren’t his forte, but he had a decent grasp of the basics to know that cloning was within technology’s ability. Not _very_ likely, but possible. Sergeant James Barnes’s body had never been recovered. If the Russians had found him…

But why this? Why create an… an assassin? A kidnapper? Someone who clearly couldn’t figure out how to behave or interact with real human beings. Someone who didn’t need to sleep as much as a normal human being. Someone who was more robot-like than the robots Tony had created.

He called this a mission, Tony thought absently, even as the man—as _Barnes_—directed Tony back into the car (much more kindly, and carefully, than before). Someone had sent him here to do this. Someone who had missed both the first meeting point and the second meeting point. Was there even a third meeting point? How long would this go?

Did those people abandon him? Did something happen to their cell or whatever, that they couldn’t make it to these points?

“Eat,” the man repeated, voice suddenly growing muffled as he began to hook the mask back on his face.

“Can you leave it off?”

It had been an impulsive question, one Tony didn’t fully understand his own reasoning behind, but the man looked… confused. Unsure.

Scared.

“This Asset must maintain mission parameters. Reaching critical levels of reinforcement. This Asset needs to maintain balance.”

Or else… what?

Tony watched the mask go back on, and he wondered.

* * *

The thing about kidnapping, besides being bored and besides that it happened a lot in Tony’s life, is that Stockholm Syndrome was a real thing. Tony could vividly remember being a child and growing fond of one kidnapper who always had made sure to sneak in little puzzle books for him while they held him for ransom. There were other guys that he took certain pride in making laugh, or by doing something unexpected enough that they’d give him backhanded compliments.

It wasn’t healthy, but it was physically impossible to live in a continuous state of terror without doing something drastic. Tony, for some weird reason, decided to fall in love.

Okay, well, _love_ was a strong word. Hell, _like_ was a strong word. Only, it was really hard to keep this man—who now, as they drove down endless back roads, primarily during the early evening to early morning hours, took care to feed Tony, to provide blankets when they apparently began venturing back north, in a north-westernly direction, to go buy a small pillow when Tony’s bruises clearly made it hard for him to sleep well—it was _very_ hard to keep this man from being conflated with Tony’s crush from his childhood. Sure, his friend Captain America had been broad-shouldered, and Tony had rubbed one out to that blond-haired warrior more than once, but his fantasy of choice as a precocious early teen had been Bucky Barnes, sniper, the person who was rescued by Captain America and then rescued the Howling Commandos, over and over again.

It was _especially_ hard to keep the two from conflating when Barnes decided to piss, or give himself a wipe-down bath (since showers, apparently, were out of the question, but ‘maintaining proper hygiene for optimal performance’ was important). Tony was currently tied to the man, unable to get free. (He’d tried, multiple times, with pins, with a paperclip he’d found, with soap, with leverage, with trying to dislocate his thumb…)

In any case, if Barnes ever disconnected from Tony (and he had to have, how did he go into stores? Get into the car? Pump gas?) Tony _never fucking noticed_. He was an observant person, he really was, but being in a car was boring, so he’d zone out, drift, sleep, and suddenly realize that at some point Barnes must have done his thing because there were chips and soda and a goddamned pair of sunglasses for Tony the next time he sat up.

“Where are we going?” Tony asked, for the fourth time that night.

Barnes didn’t answer, though his knuckles cracked as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

Tony had figured that five times was the limit—more than five times, and Barnes would punish Tony by forcing Tony to piss on the side of the road instead of in a bathroom, or would not give Tony food until Barnes decided to hole up for the night (day).

Though they were taking the back roads, Tony figured they were heading towards Iowa, or Illinois. Somewhere near the Great Lakes, since the wind and the cold were much worse, and snow piled up and up on the side of the roads.

“Do you like burgers?” he asked idly, rubbing his fingers over his (filthy, smelly, greasy) slacks, tracing the lines of the creases. “Or maybe ice cream?”

“This Asset does not have a preference of nutritional intake,” Barnes grunted.

Tony mentally added another point to himself in his mind—and noticed that there was a definite trend of Barnes answering more and more questions the longer they were on the road. Still, he wasn’t going to let the matter drop.

“Okay, you don’t have a preference—but if, like, you had to get nutrition, and you were sitting at a table with like… okay, with like, burgers on the right side, a milkshake in the center, and pizza on the left side, which one would you eat first?” he pushed.

There was no answer, and Tony began to sink back into his own thoughts, bored and wishing that he knew exactly where they were beyond ‘somewhere west of New York and more north than Creepy Warehouse the Second,’ when Barnes’s voice came, so soft Tony almost missed it. “Milkshakes seem… the best choice. For this Asset. But the Asset does not have preferences.”

“_Everyone’s_ got preferences, man,” Tony said, grinning widely that he’d managed to get an answer from Barnes. “For example, I fucking prefer the sun. Hate this ice shit.”

Barnes let out an almost devastating shudder, and his hand, which had been moving to the seat next to him, began to tremble. “I—this Asset also. Hates the ice.”

That seemed to have struck a nerve, and Tony had the absurd urge to reach out and see if Barnes was okay.

As it was, Tony subsided, and didn’t bother Barnes for the rest of that night.

* * *

Tony jerked upright, suddenly aware of soft noises. He was chained to Barnes, sleeping on the floor, and the taller man was moving restlessly on the bed.

Hesitantly, Tony reached up and gently put his fingers on the back of Barnes’s hand.

The other man seemed to freeze, and Tony wondered if he had done something wrong.

But then there was a sigh, and the restless movements and sounds eased.

Tony smiled to himself as he laid back down, curled in the blankets Barnes had given him, on the small pillow Barnes made sure that he had, and went back to sleep.

* * *

“Why do you need to take me to wherever, anyway? Seems like if they couldn’t be bothered to give you a way to contact them, there’s no reason to kill yourself for them.”

“It would be an honor for this Asset to put his life on the line for any handler,” Barnes said, but his voice was tight.

“Yeah? Not really fair if they don’t do the same in return,” Tony sighed, and yawned. “Man, I thought I had messed up sleeping schedules. This is really killing me.”

Barnes hesitated, and then turned to look at him in the backseat of the car, wedged against the floor in his customary position. “You need more rest?” Barnes asked tentatively.

Tony blinked at him. “I mean, if you’ll let me rest more? I’d love it, man. Don’t you feel rundown? I know you’re sleeping less than me—and _I’m_ sleeping in the car.”

Barnes hesitated another few minutes before sighing. “I—Rest is necessary. Maintenance is needed because of overuse of this Asset’s retraining.”

For a long moment, Tony stared at Barnes. “You’re fucking weird, you realize that?”

At that, Barnes’s eyes crinkled into a smile. “Y’ain’t no walk in th’ park yourself, doll.”

The mannerisms, the words, the drawl—everything was so radically different that the both of them froze and just stared at one another for heartbeat after heartbeat.

Finally, Tony licked his lips. “You—was that an accent? Sounded… American.”

Barnes blinked rapidly, and then looked back at the steering wheel. Thankfully, they weren’t actually out of the parking lot of the motel yet—and it was too early in the morning to worry they were blocking someone else from leaving. “I—I don’t—no, the Asset? Doesn’t know. What. That was.”

Tony’s mind had nothing to do except work over the strangeness of Barnes, and so when Barnes, clearly discomfited by what had happened, focused solely on getting them on the road, Tony hunkered down and bit at the problem, running it over and over in his head.

* * *

“You know… we could keep on driving. Go all the way to California. My home’s there. My real home, not the apartment you dragged me out of,” Tony mumbled from his place on the floor.

Barnes twisted in the bed and looked down at Tony on the floor. In the dark, his eyes looked even lighter, for some reason. After a few minutes of silence, Barnes let out a sigh. “You… the people. They ain’t gonna let—they will not lose their Asset.”

Almost incredulously, Tony looked around the room and then back at Barnes. “Looks like they lost you, alright. Didn’t bother to give you resources, or training, or whatever. Didn’t bother to stick around for your rendezvous. So… I got a lotta money. So long as you’re determined to stay away from them… we could make it work.”

The silence stretched out, long enough that Tony held out hope, but then Barnes sighed and rolled back onto the bed.

Tony didn’t know why he felt so disappointed, but he was, and he sunk into the blankets wrapped around him, trying not to let tears well up.

* * *

Tony was shaken out of his doze by the car coming to a slow stop. He blinked his eyes and pushed himself up—he’d been getting pretty handy at using his left hand to do things like that—and saw an industrial farm building, sitting way back from the road.

He swallowed hard, and whispered, “I know—I get you have to. But… what’s going to happen to me?”

Barnes slid his gaze from in front to look at Tony from the side.

“I mean… not ransom, right? If it was money, they’d have stuck around,” Tony said nervously. “And… and I can’t think of any other reason to keep me around this long. Which means they’re going to kill me. Aren’t they?”

Vehemently, Barnes shook his head. “No! They would not. They would…”

When Bucky trailed off, Tony felt his hands tremble as he tried to say with false bravado, “Not making me feel any better about this, Buckaroo.”

“They would not kill you. They would…” and Barnes looked down at his hands. At himself.

Then he put the car into gear and drove off.

* * *

That night, in the motel, for the first time since those fateful few days—it had easily been at least a week of back road driving, doubling back and taking twisty routes—when it came to sleeping, Tony started to make his little nest on the floor, but Barnes put out his hand and gently grasped Tony’s elbow.

And pulled Tony into the bed with him.

* * *

The next morning, Tony woke up warm, warmer than he’d ever been in this past week. He was somewhere soft, too, and felt… safe.

He blinked his eyes open, and stared for a long moment, uncomprehendingly, at the coils of silver and the manacles lying on the night table.

Then he looked wonderingly at his own arm, his left arm, that felt so much lighter without the chain and manacle on it. He could slip out of the room! He could try to escape again; Barnes certainly wouldn’t be expecting it—

Or.

Or he could stay. Take Bucky with him to Malibu.

Tony closed his eyes, breathed in deep, and fell back asleep.


End file.
